Slightly to the right of all this carnage, Alenkin is fuming at the time it takes to reload. Yes, he knew it would be a while, but it seems like forever when the enemy is out there slavering to get the next hit on them.

They take that hit next, high in the side of the superstructure, and shrapnel screams around inside their steel box. “Damn, too close,” he thinks. “Come on men, we are dying here!” he shouts to the crew. They are bleeding from multiple wounds but don’t appear to be out of the fight yet.

He is deafened by the next hit. He sees light and thinks it is fire. “How can there be light inside?” is his first thought. Then the compartment fills with smoke and he hears screaming.

“Out, everybody out!” he commands, somewhat redundantly. If they are on fire he is probably going to be the last one out – the rest are like rabbits. He moves around to see to the crew and finds the gunner torn in half. The driver is already out and the loader is holding his detached left arm with his right hand, looking at it dumbly.

“Come on Yuri,” he says gently, “we are getting out.”

“My arm, sergeant?” the man says, clearly in shock.

“Yes, of course, bring it with you. We’ll fix it on the outside.”

With that he helps the wounded man up and out of the upper hatch. He thinks his other loader already abandoned as well. The heat is starting to build inside their steel coffin and the hatch is acting like a chimney. He does not know that the enemy he hit is doing the same thing – their glancing blow was a kill after all.

Boradin is just to the left of Alenkin. He has seen the fire from Alenkin’s gun and he is hunting for targets. Then he sees Alenkin take several hits and smoke billows from the tank.

“Where did those shots come from?” he queries his crew. They are all looking hard now, and cannot be sure. The gunner cries out that there are tanks directly ahead of them, unknown type or weight.

Boradin is looking through his viewport and then sees plumes of white-red smoke billowing in the distance. He knows they have only moments.

“Back, back us up now!” he shouts desperately. The gears grind and he imagines they are lurching backward when there is a tremendous explosion on the corner of their tank. It throws him into the side of the tank and bounces everyone else around except the driver and gunner.

“Track hit!” announces the driver.

“How bad?”

“Serious. The track on the left side is not responding well. Should we abandon?"

Boradin hears the plea in the voice of his driver and knows the same feeling is shared by the rest of his crew. He has only seconds – if that – to decide their fate.

“No, dammit, not yet! We have the best steel from Mother Russia to protect us. Back us out fast! Our gun will see us to safety…count on it!"

Boradin hopes his voice sounded confident. They may all be dead men for all he knows, with a crippled track and Tigers eager to burn them. “Did I just make the right decision” he wonders to himself. He feels their gun respond slowly and they start to back away.

In barely 30 seconds Major Sankovsky has lost three of his 6 guns to enemy fire and two of the survivors are possibly crippled. He has not had time to realize this, as things have gone crazy in a very short time.

It is an inauspicious start. The beast hunters are not faring well at all and he doesn’t even know this yet.

Boradin is vocally urging his steel beast to back up fast. Over the din he hears his gunner.

“Target dead ahead, moving and firing,” shouts the gunner. “300 meters, closing right to left on shallow angle.”

Boradin’s tank is crawling backwards; he can feel the enemy rounds already in the air coming at him. But even in all the madness, death so close they can feel his clammy hand on their shoulders, his gunner thinks only of getting vengeance.

“Do you have him?” shouts Boradin.

“Da, Sergeant…wait, now he stops, he is stopping to fire,” yells the gunner.

“At us?”

“No, someone to our left…”

“Fire!” interrupts Boradin. His breath is ripped with the monumental explosion of gasses as their 15.2-cm shell is launched from the breech by the powder charge. He swears they are shoved backwards an extra 20 meters from the firing of their gun.

Far out on the exposed steppe, a German Mark III Panzer commander is closing on the wooded copse. He sees a fat green target and is lining up for a shot. To his right, brothers in giant Tigers are covering his advance. He feels very confident.

He calls to his driver to stop, so they can get a better shot on the green monster. It is one he has not seen before, but he knows they can be killed because he just finished one off moments before. He braces as they slew to a stop.

The gunner fires too quickly, as they are still rebounding from the suspension absorbing the sudden stop. He sees the blast of dirt fly up from beside his target. “Dammit,” he curses silently, “should have been a hit.” He hears the breech opening and the clang of the shell as it is ejected. The next one will hit.

A giant billow of white-red smoke and a flash to his left catches his attention. His first thought is that one of the Tigers scored a kill-shot, but something is not right – the smoke is wrong for a kill. His next thought is more chilling but it never fully materializes in his consciousness….

Sounding like the scream of an out-of-control freight train, the massive artillery shell from Boradin’s tank ends its flight by impacting into the side hull of the enemy panzer. The explosion is massive, essentially flattening and disintegrating the front half of the enemy tank. The destruction is so totally devastating that there is no fuel to burn out, no ammunition to cook off. All that is left is pieces of what used to be a war machine, with only traces of the human occupants.

Kovalenko can feel the eyes of the enemy on him as they slowly retreat from danger. It is an itchy feeling that is driving him crazy. The near miss to their right sounds like steel fingers screeching against their hull.

He checks out his commander vision port and sees an enemy tank lining up on them. They are turned wrong and cannot get their gun to bear so all they can do is hope for another miss. He feels as if he is hoping against hope…

…and the enemy tank erupts in a giant fountain of smoke and flame. He yells in relief as does the gunner for they both saw their moment of salvation at the same time. The others are startled until Kovalenko quickly tells them one of their comrades just flattened the fascist tank that was about to hit them.

There are smiles all around when another hammer blow rocks their tank from the left side. “Damn, that was big,” thinks Kovalenko.

“That Tiger is still hunting us,” shouts Romanov. “Can’t you make this crate move faster, Golkov?”

Golkov ignores the gunner, whispering in urgency to his tank. “Come on Stalker, please come on, faster, faster, hurry…” He has the transmission wide open, both clutches flat out, and can hear the grating of the tortured tracks outside the hull as they grind their damaged links through the road wheels.

Boradin is cheering for his crew. They are smiling except for the driver who is concentrating on backing them away into the safety of the woods.

Boradin tells his crew what a great job they did, flattening the fascist tank, describing it to them in detail all the while hoping to distract them from the fact that perhaps three enemy tanks have them in their sights this very moment. He is sure they are still in peril and wants to keep them focused on fighting.

The enemy shell cuts that hope with brutal efficiency. The Tiger’s shell easily slices through the superstructure of the Beast Hunter, impacting on the side of their giant cannon. Shrapnel and the concussion decapitate Boradin while turning the driver and gunner into little more than shredded flesh.

Both loader and breech operator are stunned and only partially wounded. Instinct drilled into them from hours of exhausting practice cause them, even without knowing it, to claw for the nearest hatches, and they throw themselves from the wreck of their once-mighty tank.

Major Sankovsky is witness to this destruction. He hears the slam of steel on steel and sees the ugly gout of smoke rush out the hatches of Boradin’s tank, thrown open by the force of the explosion. He sees two panicked men, blackened and burned, as they literally hurl themselves from the charnel house that once was a proud Soviet tank.

At the same time he sees the silent hulk of Alenkin’s tank, also knocked out. There is a group of survivors – five he counts – all bleeding and in various states of shock. He knows of two of his command that are knocked out for sure. What has become of Malek and his tanks is still a mystery.

“Get Malek on the radio,” he calls to his breech operator. Several attempts are unsuccessful. “Try them all,” he commands. There is still no response.

Even as Sankovsky is trying to contact any of his remaining Beast Hunters, Kovalenko’s crew is fighting to stay alive. With the near misses buffeting around his tank, Kovalenko knows that Babushka has a limited time to live. If they can only get deeper into the woods…

An artillery gun crew is nearby and witnesses the next few seconds in the remaining life of 1442/2/3 Soviet Artillery Gun SU-152. It is clear that the wounded tank is being tag-teamed by several enemy tanks, as evidenced by the fountains of dirt rising to either side of the giant green tank. The tank almost exudes the human emotion of pain as it drags its bulk rearward towards safety. The inhuman object has seemingly taken on human characteristics.

Inside is controlled chaos as Kovalenko is urging Golkov to strip the gears if necessary but get them moving backward fast.

It is not enough. A staggering blow to the front partially tears their giant gun mount loose, as if a monster has gripped the gun by the barrel and yanked it. The gun and mount are wrenched to the right, pinning Kovalenko against the side of the tank wall. He can only roar in crushing pain. He wonders how he can hurt so much. He has no idea that the pain will go away in less than 5 seconds.

Before any of the crew can even react to help, the next round impacts the right front of their gun, this time shearing through the already damaged front glacis plate and mercifully obliterating the gun commander. To the watching artillerymen nearby the wounded Beast Hunter, it appears the next hit was very close behind the first. If anyone was calculating this, it would be clear that the tank is being targeted by two enemy tanks. Loading would take around 5 seconds for an experienced crew – if it was the same tank there would have been a longer period of time.

As if this was not already enough, in about 5 more seconds a third round tears into the front of the damaged tank. Evidently this would be the second round from the first enemy tank, following up their original hit which damaged the gun. Romanov is starting to shout an order to abandon when his breath is stolen from him and he is suddenly aware that he is sitting on the floor of the tank but cannot move or speak. He realizes he is stunned and would expect that the rest of the crew is too.

Smoke is filling the interior of the tank and somewhere in the back of his mind he is counting down their passage into eternity.

As greasy grey smoke pours from Babushka, signaling her death throes, the enemy Tigers are apparently satisfied as they cease fire to determine if further shells are needed to ensure a kill shot.

Romanov thinks his arm is broken as he cannot move it, but he shakes off the stunned effects and quickly gets to his feet. The loader and breech operator are slowly moving, as if they are sleepwalking.

“Grelov! Svetckin! Get out now,” he yells at them. They are bleeding but appear to be able to abandon on their own. He turns away from them to search for the commander and the driver.

Golkov is leaning back in his driver’s seat, steel plating crushing his lap. His face is already white with death. Romanov can see that some of the jagged steel sliced clean through both the little driver’s legs. “He must have bled out very fast,” thinks Romanov.

Of Kovalenko he can only see part of a leg and boot. The rest of their commander was atomized by the second hit, but there is a bloody paste on the hull wall signifying that a human being once occupied that area of the tank.

Romanov now feels the fire where before he was only aware of the choking smoke. It is getting very hard to breathe. He cuts and bruises himself on bent and damaged interior tank parts as he painfully moves in slow motion to the hatch. It seems so far up above him now, and the heat is starting to funnel up through the opening. He doesn’t know if he has the strength to escape now, and he can feel his skin starting to blister.

He braces himself and throws a hand up to grip the lip of the hatch opening, but has no more strength and hangs there. “So this is how it ends?” he wonders. “How soon before I burst into flames?”

Just before he loses consciousness he feels strong hands gripping his arm. Then he is aware of the cool grass on his skin, fresh air brushing gently over him, and the blue sky above. He has been saved from Hell itself. Svetckin and Grelov are looking down at him, smiling through grimy faces. It is good to be alive.

Chilling realization comes over Major Sankovsky that his entire command has been decimated in less than 5 minutes. His gun is the only one left. “How will he explain all this to the Colonel?” he wonders. Maybe, with a little luck, he won’t survive the rest of the battle.

It occurs to him that a suicide attack might save what little honor he has remaining.

As Sankovsky is trying to come to grips with his situation, the Tiger now stalks forward. For whatever reason, possibly track damage, the second one stays put, as overwatch for the battlefield.

The commander of the 4.5-cm gun section points out the arrogant beast, and his gun crew quickly spin the gun to take aim. “Perhaps they can get a flank shot if the Tiger keeps crawling forward,” Sgt. Molov thinks.

Ah, but it is not to be. The Tiger has keen eyesight and abruptly stops, swinging the entire hull to face Molov’s gun. His gunner looks back at the sergeant with imploring eyes begging him to abandon their position.

“Get a firing solution now!” commands Molov. “How dare they think we should run!” he keeps the thought to himself. The gunner spins and takes aim. There is a large blast right in front of their gun, and several of the crew are wounded. Molov feels blood running down the side of his head and realizes hot shrapnel has cut him on the forehead. The enemy missed. He knows what will happen in the next few seconds.

“Fire, damn you!” he screams at the gunner. The man is so frightened that he grips the trigger without getting the proper aim on the Tiger. The round goes wide and Molov is about to berate the gunner for his failure….

…The direct impact is fatal in every way. The gun shield disintegrates into a hundred deadly shards as the concussion of the exploding 8.8-cm shell spreads a bloody swath through Molov’s crew. There is no time to scream or even think. The men die with a confused expression on their face, as if wondering how this could happen so fast. The Tiger crew sees a giant burst of flame as the remaining anti-tank shells cook off in the fiery explosion. The enemy gun no longer exists.

Soviet infantry in the front lines again get that sudden feeling of impending doom. The air pressure seems to rise moments before they hear the scream of another barrage from the Katys. Dig deep, their sergeants yell, as the barrage will be falling right on top of them….again! The men resolve that if they ever find the gunners…. …and the world explodes once again. It heaves and rocks as if a living being.

The Tiger commander is yelling at his driver to get to top speed and escape the storm that is falling on them. The Tiger’s engine screams but the crew cannot hear it over the insane artillery barrage falling on them.

Conflict of Heroes "Most games are like checkers or chess and some have dice and cards involved too. This game plays like checkers but you think like chess and the dice and cards can change everything in real time."

Further back, infantrymen in their trenches are watching the awesome display of power. Some are pointing as they see men in field grey uniforms running, dodging, trying to find a way out of the hell that falls from above. Some of the men are laughing at the plight of the enemy while others watch silent and grim. Great sweeps of the Grim Reaper’s scythe slash down the hapless enemy soldiers. There is no escape.

The barrage seems to go on forever, but just as quickly as it began, it now wanes and stops. A last few explosions are seen and then only smoke. What could have survived that barrage? the men wonder. They strain to see through the falling dirt and rising dust. Are the fascists still alive and coming?

Then they hear the engine of the Tiger and know that not everything perished.

In the distance there is a muffled boom, and Markov looks quickly to the horizon. Yes, there is a plume of smoke rising – Deska has another kill. He glances quickly over his shoulder to see Belov shaking with anger and then he busies himself looking for more targets. “Perhaps they will get lucky and find one to keep their corporal happy,” he hopes. He cringes as he hears the cheers from Deska’s crew wafting across the high grass.

Anatov is gently maneuvering his T-34 tank up a slight rise. He received word from his unit commander to move out of his nice safe gun pit and attempt to flank an enemy tank. There were hard looks from his crew as he gave the orders – they’d worked all night digging their revetment and now they were leaving the relative safety of their hull-down position. “I’m just as unhappy as the rest of you,” was his reply to their tired and angry faces. It changed nothing.

The crew is tired and sullen as they handle their stations. Anatov has moved several hundred meters north below the crest line, attempting to gain a flanking position on the fascist tank. He has received more information that the tank is a medium type, not a Tiger. He gives this information to the crew and they brighten a bit at the prospect of perhaps surviving the upcoming battle. No one wants to go up against a Tiger!

He sees infantrymen motioning to him and pointing over the crest line. “This must be the place,” he says out loud to no one in particular. Their tank engine covers his voice anyway.

“Ease our way up the rise,” he orders the driver. “I want a proper hull-down position and I’ll tell you when to stop. We expose only the turret.”

The engine roars and they begin to slowly climb the gentle rise. They barely miss some infantrymen in their foxholes, as the driver eases past the men. He is trying to keep their climb at a steady pace but is having trouble with the transmission.

Anatov is the first to see over the crest and he sees the enemy tank directly in front of them, turret pointing in a different direction. He has calculated this just right and quickly yells the command to stop, right now.

The driver is tired from no sleep and the command to stop is not immediately recognized as he is trying to see if there are any more soldiers he needs to avoid running over. Suddenly his commander is screaming at him to stop.

He moves his feet frantically, but instead of disengaging the clutch and at the same time hitting the brake pedals, he inadvertently hits the accelerator pedal. The tank lurches forward quickly to his extreme consternation and the sudden anguish of the entire crew.

Anatov is now beside himself with anger but this dissolves and cold fear grips him as he sees the enemy tank turret quickly revolving in his direction. He is still screaming the order to stop as he sees the bloom of white-red smoke billow from the barrel of the enemy tank. He drops into his tank with only milliseconds to spare.

The enemy shell hits the front hull perfectly, just to one side of the driver’s vision port. The frantic driver also saw the enemy fire, and pretty much watched the enemy shell come right for him. There is a white flare and wall of sparks as the round is deflected by the angle of the steel plating.

“I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead!” the driver is screaming, while Anatov is now yelling to the gunner to fire the damn gun. They are maybe 160 meters – practically point blank range – and they cannot miss.

But the enemy gets the first hit, throwing Anatov off his commander’s seat. Their gun is loaded and he cannot believe they didn’t get the first shot, and more so, that they have been hit already. “Fire, damn you, fire!” he shouts at the gunner, from the floor of the tank.

The gunner is looking through the sight and has everything lined up just right, and now finds himself frozen in fear. He cannot make his hands work to grip the trigger. He also saw the bloom of death from the enemy tank and felt the hit and he cannot do anything about it – he is paralyzed by the fear of dying, the fear of the enemy, and mostly the fear of his tank commander.

He watches as the enemy tank lets loose another burst of exploding gas and spent cordite and yet another round streaks towards his tank. He watches the round coming right for him and closes his eyes, waiting for death.

The driver is still screaming and now scrambling out of his seat as the next round explodes against their front hull, again, almost in his lap. He falls from his seat and lands on Anatov, who is scrambling up to grab the gunner. If he can only yank the man away, he will fire the damn gun himself. Now he is tangled up with the screaming driver, the dull thrum of the enemy shell reverberating through their tank and stunning them with its impact. Anatov feels like he is losing his mind, knowing what he has to do and unable to do it.

“Get off me you jackass!” he shouts at the driver, punching and kicking him unmercifully in his effort to free himself from the crazed man.

A most amazing series of events now occurs. It is documented in sequence as each event appears intertwined with the others.

Anatov manages to free himself from the driver and now viciously punches his gunner in the side of the head. This shocks the gunner out of his paralysis and he grips his hands in sympathetic reaction to the punch. He was gripping the trigger and fires their cannon, the explosion deafening inside the tank. The gun recoils violently as the tank rocks, throwing everyone off balance.

The loader is terrified by the insanity occurring inside the tank but he cannot help himself as he instinctively spins to run the next tank shell into the open breech. In the process he slams into Anatov, knocking him down again. Once more Anatov is grappling with his crazed driver, and pummeling him with both fists, raging at him and no longer caring if they live or die.

Anatov stops punching the driver for a moment as he suddenly realizes what that idiot gunner meant. He thought they were hit again and they are on fire but it now dawns on him that their shot killed the enemy tank after all. He slumps back in sudden relief, the insanity of the moment apparently over.

“Nyet, Tiger DEAD AHEAD!” The gunner’s voice pierces the momentary lull in the tank interior. The absolute dread of that one word cuts through everyone in the tank.

The driver panics and starts to climb over Anatov in his haste to escape the tank from the upper hatch. He has no desire to return to the front of the tank after almost eating two enemy shells fired directly at him.

“You filthy pig! You’ve killed us, you bastard!” roars Anatov, as he starts punching the driver again. They are moments from death and all he can think to do is punish the idiot driver who drove them too far up the rise and into the killing zone. He no longer cares about anything except punching this worthless bag of filth.

The Tiger commander sees a Mark III medium Panzer explode just to his left and follows the line of the shot, seeing the smoke clearing from around the barrel of a T-34. “Target 1 o’clock, 160 meters, silhouetted, just beyond the halftrack wreck,” he intones in the microphone. From his view outside the hatch of the tank it is a clear shot but he is higher and to the rear of their cannon.

The gunner is lower and to the left, and he sees that the halftrack is partially blocking their shot. He makes a quick adjustment, knowing that at this range the T-34 can kill them just as easily as they him.

“Fire when ready,” orders the commander.

The infantry riding on the back deck of the tank hear the commander and they all grab for handholds and try to cover their ears. It is going to be loud.

As all this is going on to the right flank, Major Sankovsky is trying to maneuver the remains of his lost command into position at the front of the wooden copse. He is painfully aware of his losses, as he is sliding his SU-152 in between the broken hulls of the tanks of Boradin and Alenkin. He hopes the enemy won’t catch on that his is the one that is still operative.

As he directs his tank into position beyond the tree line he is confronted with a chilling sight. He spots a Tiger directly ahead and orders his driver to stop immediately.

At the same time, his gunner spots a Tiger just off to the right at 2 o’clock and the gunner shouts to spin right. The driver is completely confused by what he hears, both apparently contradicting one another.

He clutches in and brakes faster for the right track than he does for the left track, this causing the massive tank to slew to the right. It is already nose heavy from the massive gun mantle and this causes the tank to dip heavily into the soft Russian earth.

Sankovsky sees the death bloom from the Tiger that he saw (now to his left), and knows they will be killed in moments. He drops from the open hatch into his commander’s seat – it is all he can think to do in the time allowed before they are blotted out.

As skill and training are great assets on the field of battle, so also are luck, providence, and fate. Sankovsky and his crew are saved by simple turns of random actions. The Tiger’s shell impacts viciously against their turning front face, sparking brilliantly and scoring a deep gouge in the thick Soviet steel. The remains of the shell then carom off with a wild shriek of tortured metal.

The Tiger gunner had them perfectly lined up when he was ordered to fire. As he fired, Sankovsky’s driver, confused by the conflicting orders, accidentally slewed their tank to the right. Due to the extreme weight of the already front-heavy chassis and the momentum being carried into the rapid turn, the suspension dipped heavily while the treads shoved into the dirt.

These split-second actions caused the perfectly lined kill-shot to suddenly hit at more of an angle and higher on the target than intended. The AT shell could not bite into the steel plating at enough of an angle to allow it to tear through and impact inside the SU-152. The Soviet tank men were saved by an accident of fate – as it all happened so fast they have no idea why they are still alive, only that they are!

Sankovsky’s gunner now has a clear flank shot on the Tiger he spotted. They are dead on, barely 450 meters out, and the Tiger is stopped, probably lining up a shot on someone else.

“Major, I can fire,” he shouts. “Orders?”

Sankovsky is partially stunned by the hit that almost killed them. He is confused because they aren’t pointing at the Tiger he saw. He never noticed the one the gunner spotted. Because he can’t comprehend what has just happened he instinctively reacts.

The gigantic roar of their artillery piece is deafening, even though their leather headgear partially dulls the sound. The interior of the tank is instantly filled with expended gasses and smoke. The breech operator and the loader immediately snap to action as they begin the laborious and time-consuming task of reloading the cannon.

Sankovsky quickly looks to his vision port, trying to see how badly they missed their target, because they are pointing in the wrong direction. What he sees takes his breath away.

The Tiger gunner depresses his trigger, and the Tiger roars in anger. The tank is rocked back as the 8.8-cm cannon launches the massive shell and a gout of flame and smoke as well. The gunner is following the shell and sees part of the destroyed halftrack fly up. “Damn,” he thinks, “They clipped the halftrack after all.” He has time to wonder if this will affect their hit….

A deadly freight train slams into the side of the Tiger tank. Sankovsky’s gunner is dead on with his aim. The riding infantry are hurled from the tank as the Tiger’s interior is shattered. The 15.2 –cm shell spares no one. The Beast Killer has finally lived up to its name – Sankovsky and his gunner watch in amazement.

In the distance the Tiger’s last gasp can be seen sparking against the sloped front armor of Anatov’s hapless T-34. The German gunner will never know that the shell trajectory was altered just enough by the dead halftrack that it sheared off from its target and failed to get the kill.

As the errant Tiger’s shell strikes the front of Anatov’s T-34, the crew are stunned and pitched about. Anatov is knocked unconscious as his head strikes the breech block of their gun. This is good news for the driver, as he manages to push away from his enraged commander, now lying silent on the floor.

He looks at the gunner and sees his wide-eyed fear reflected back from the face in front of him. “What should we do?” he asks in a quivering voice.

“Maybe we should shove the commander out the hatch and drive away,” suggests the gunner in a shaky voice.

“Someone might see,” reflects the driver, remembering the infantrymen in their foxholes nearby. “Back to stations,” he says, with more confidence than he really feels. “Let’s pretend everything is alright and the commander was having a breakdown or something. That might work.” He doesn’t sound convincing.

The machine gunner and the loader quickly agree to the plan and they immediately re-crew their stations, loading the cannon in the process and scanning for more targets.